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'good intentions' & 'some students' are the zombies of discussions about IRS, colonialism, Canada, & history. They come back to life, again & again, because they're easy ways to articulate a deep refusal to hear Indigenous versions of Canada's past & present.
O'Toole and Beyak are the loudest and most high profile people to haul out these zombie arguments, but they are hardly alone -- low-stakes residentials school denial is shot through mainstream conversations about Canada & history.
And this is in spite of decades of exhaustive research in both written and oral archives, in spite of careful & cautious arguments about what IRS meant, most notably by the TRC, but also by RCAP and university and community based researchers.
When I am optomistic, i think that the blow back that O'Toole & Beyak are getting speaks to a meaningful shift that has happened: yes these people persist with their damaging & highly strategic denials, but they are held accountable for it.
When I am less optimistic, I think that having to fight zombies, again and again and again and again, with thousands of footnotes and the most careful of interpretations, keeps us all perpetually on our heels, always having to make these most basic of arguments.
At its core, the Beyak and O'Toole school of Canadian history begins with the denial of Indigenous peoples' full humanity & the presumption of white innocence. And all the footnotes and archives in the world do little to change either of these ideas, and here we are, again.
